A lot of the cars have those spacer hinges at the bottom of the engine cover to help with cooling; is that common in Italy?
I wouldn't say it's common on the streets, but rather at the meetings. I guess people like the racey look of the open bonnet. And there are a ****load of people going for some kind of Abarth replica look when restoring 500's...
Are many of the cars standard? I see a lot of fat tyres.
At the meeting there were all sorts of modded cars, but I had the pleasure to see amazing original ones, sometimes even preserved or restored with old spares... I even saw a Zanzara Zagato, which might be the rarest 500 derivate out there!
Is is common for them to be everyday cars...not too shiny and looking like they are used regularly?
It most definately is, and there were a bunch like that at the meeting!
I guess there's long-distance award; you went a big distance
, how far was the longest journey to get there?
I drove 700 kilometers to get there (1600 for the whole trip including Monaco), the guy from Finland I interviewed in the other video allegedly drove 3800 kilometers!
Apart from showing off the cars, what else happens?
I am trying to make vids of everything that happened, but my real job is slowing that down
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There are a lot of things to do at the meeting, and I honestly didn't manage to even attend all the programmed events. What I actually did was: Drive to the beach of Alassio for a midnight swim and showing off the cars on the pier; Drive a 60 kilometers Grand Tour on closed roads in the mountains with police escort to go show off the cars in Imperia; the Parade you see in this video
I missed the drive to the waterpark do to interviews, and something else because I wanted to spend time at the spare parts market (which was amazing!)
There also are shows, live music, disco dancing and lots of beer at night if you want. And the Fiat 500 museum of Garlenda is free entrance for all the meeting participants